A long room, cold and vaguely bluish. Clouds of breath hanging in the air. Pale faces floating in the blue like jellyfish. 

They were not crowd faces. Some of them he knew very well, and some were sketchy. But they all had a chilly significance that the faces back in the stadium had lacked. They all had something in common.

Jack opened the door again, and then closed it again. Some kind of sound must have escaped his lips, because he heard Sita, from very far away, asking what was wrong. And then she was pinching at his clothes again, struggling to hold him as he sank down with his back against the closed door.

A long room, filled with the dead. Everyone he'd ever killed. Every life he'd ever ended. They had parted to make a kind of corridor for him to walk down. He had no reason to suppose they would attack him, or Sita. But they would stare.

Their arrangement interested him. One of the closest faces had been that of Violet Pike. And, opposite her, the too-tanned old man who'd commanded the gargoyles. He was not – as in some stupid ghost story – holding his severed head under his arm, but there was an immaculate line of bruise-purple stretched across his throat, as though the wound had fused together in water.

After that had been soldiers – barely glimpsed and yet somehow sharply detailed. He could see the overlapping scales of their armour, the chin-straps on their helmets.

Their arrangement, though. Their arrangement was chronological. Well, reverse chronological. Was there a word for that? Retrological? Which meant that, at the end, in the blue distance, would be the first person he'd ever killed – the one he'd begun his life by killing.

It was a long time before Sita's words got through to him. He knew, because she had stopped tugging at his clothes and started pounding on his chest. Even so, she was still muted – screechy and far-away, as though he had water in his ears.

"–t is it? –ot is it? Tell me!"

"It's everyone I've ever killed," he said – or tried to say. Sita quietened down, so he supposed he must have said something. 

She sat beside him with her back to the door and rested her chin on her knees. "There are lots of them?"

"Oh yes."

"But you're a soldier," she said doubtfully. "Probably any soldier would see lots-"

"There are women too," said Jack.

"And children?"

"Only one child."

At this, he felt a lurch of nausea that made him curl up around his stomach. What would he see? Just Baby Jane? Would she be cradling her unborn child in her arms? Would it look like a child?

And, all at once, he hit a brick wall of certainty. He couldn't go in there. He knew what he could do – it had always been one of his greatest strengths. It had never worked the other way before, but now he knew – as surely as he'd known that he could liberate the colonies or get Ellini into bed with enough cheerful persistence – that he couldn't go in there.

He told Sita this. He hoped he phrased it differently, but again, he had no idea. His awareness kept cutting out, as though he was falling into lots of little pot-holes and hauling himself up again.

She was still and silent beside him. He got the feeling she was pursing her lips. "There's no-one else," she said at last. "If you don't help me, I'll be here forever."

This made the barest impression on him. It would have stung, ten minutes ago, but now he was underwater. "When I don't come back, Elsie will send someone el-"

"No," said Sita. "The Queen said I'd partake of your failures. That means if you get trapped here, I get trapped here. We'll have to spend the rest of our lives together in this room. And I won't be very good company, because I won't be talking to you."

Somehow, that comment made it through the swirl of water around his head. He felt his lips twitch, as though they were trying to smile. "Can't do it, Sita," he croaked. 

"But you will," she said, still resting her chin on her knees.

Jack didn't respond. There was no point arguing.

"You know what I do?" she added. "When I have to do something that scares me? I think about the apple trees in Regent's Park."

"What about the apple trees in Regent's Park?" 

She shrugged, which had the effect of pulling her into an even tighter, sulkier ball. "Well, they look so clean – you know, when the blossom's on them. I've never been outside London, so I never really saw a tree that wasn't weighed down with soot, but Leeny and I have to walk through Regent's in the springtime to go to the Easter service, and we see the apple-blossom then, all pink and white like rich girls' dresses, all sort of waving at you in great big clumps as though each twig has a fistful of flowers. And I remember it when it's not spring-time – when everything's all grey and brown – and it makes me happier."

She squinted at him. "Can you think of anything like that? A happy memory that sort of holds your hand when you have to do things you don't like?"

Jack stared serenely at the opposite wall. Perhaps there were lots of things teeming under the ice in his chest, but they couldn't seem to break through. It was like the amnesia – a flavour in his mouth, an itching behind the eyeballs – but nothing more.

"I can't think of anything."

Sita shuffled closer to him, undaunted. "All right then. You can take mine."

"Your-?"

"My memory. My apple trees."

"That's very kind of you, but-"

"Do you know Regent's Park? The gate on Park Road?"

He did know. It was funny how he could remember that, but not a happy memory. Perhaps it was because the park gate was just neutral. It wasn't incompatible with his current mood. It didn't smack you in the face with bright colours or unlikely smiles.

"Yes?" he ventured.

"Good. Now follow the canal until you see it break into the lake. The apple trees are to your right."

He could see the canal, and the pebbled slope down to the lake. He had a vague impression of green and grey, but he'd never had to pay much attention to horticulture before.

"Can you see the blossom waving?" Sita pressed on. "And all drifting down to the ground like confetti? Once it touches the ground it does get sooty and muddy a bit, but just concentrate on the blossoms above your head."

"It's not going to work," he protested – but faintly. They had to spend the rest of their lives down here, after all, and this was as good a way to pass the time as any.

He let her chatter wash over him until he could see them. And then he let her talk about why she loved them, because it was soothing and simple to share her joy. It loosened the knots in his stomach.

She told him about the time Ellini had waggled one of the branches above her head and pretended it was her wedding day. Sita had been uninterested in imagining the wedding day, but had perked right up when her sister had talked about the places she might visit on her honeymoon.

"That's when she told me about Venice," said Sita, her eyes shining. "A whole city made up of lots of tiny islands joined together by bridges. One of them's called the Bridge of Sighs."

"I know it is," said Jack, half-laughing.

"You've been there?"

"I told you so when we first met, remember? That was the place that smelled just like London on a hot day?"

"Oh," said Sita, jutting out her chin defiantly. "Well, I'll be right at home there, then."

"I think you'd be at home anywhere."

She waved this aside impatiently. "Never mind that! Can you see my apple trees?"

He could. They were right in front of his eyes now, animated by her joy. A whole tree struck him as being too big to be portable, even in his imagination, so he pictured a single branch, laden with blossom, and examined it from behind closed eyes.

The pink-white blossom was dancing and fluttering and bright. It looked as though it would burn his fingers if he touched it. It didn't mean anything, but then his mind would have rejected anything with meaning. This was just something nice to rest his eyes on while he trudged through that horrible room.

He couldn't remember when he had decided he would get up and try. He couldn't remember when he'd surfaced from the underwater calm. He wasn't calm now. Terror was writhing in his guts, but so was love, in a less obtrusive way. He had come to love Sita very quickly – and to depend on her even faster. He was too scared and too tired to dwell on any forlorn hopes of living with Ellini, and raising Sita together as their child (somewhere in India, where he could watch her marvel at every brilliant, bustling new sight). But these hopes were present in the apple blossom, no fainter for being unexpressed.

"You'll get up on my shoulders," he told her, when he had struggled to his feet. "And keep your eyes closed the whole time, do you understand me?"

"Yes, Ishmael," she said meekly. It was disingenuous meekness, of course. He might just as well have asked her to keep her eyes closed in Venice during carnival time.

"I don't want you to have any nightmares," he insisted. "Though, I must admit, that ship has probably already sailed."

"If it has, you didn't launch it. It was Father Maloney who pushed me down a sewer shaft, remember?"

"I'll never forget." 

He knelt down to make it easier for her to climb up on his shoulders. She was almost solid now, and didn't drift through him as he had feared she would. Sometimes her skin still had a translucent sheen, but when she seized handfuls of his hair and pretended to use it to steer him, she was just like any other little girl.

He took a deep breath, opened the door, and ducked inside, being careful not to hit Sita's head on the doorframe. He held the blossom-branch in his head like a wanderer in these passages might hold a taper. It was bright but shaky. He could see the pink-white blossoms trembling as if with fright.

The cavern had jagged ceilings but smooth floors. He couldn't work out where the blue came from – the walls just seemed to exude it, the way he had imagined the walls of Lily Hamilton's bedroom exuding despair.

And it was cold. He felt as though he'd just walked into an ice house. His breath steamed, and joined the rank, clammy mist that was being exhaled by his past victims.

There was a breeze – strong enough to tease and swirl the clouds of breath, but not strong enough to disperse them. It was having an effect on his little bough of apple blossom, which was shedding petals as though it was in a gale. And somehow he knew that, when the bloom was all gone – when he could only see a bare branch in his mind's eye – his taper would go out, and he'd be benighted.

He hoped Sita was high enough to be above the fug. He didn't like to think of her breathing it. Still, the air was clear around each dead man's eyes. Whoever had designed this cave – his own brain, perhaps – wanted him to have no excuse not to look at them. Nothing to soften the moment when he met their eyes and was confronted by what it meant to kill them.

But how could you take in the implications of that? Of all the possibilities you'd ended? All the thoughts and feelings you'd whipped away? It was impossible to do for one victim, let alone two hundred. 

In the end, he didn't realize it consciously. That would have been too much. He just sensed the depths of possibility he had closed off. It was as though he was looking at a wall of debris from a collapsed cave-ceiling, but he could feel the occasional breeze coming through between the stones, and glimpse a fertile darkness that hinted at immensities beyond.

Still, he wasn't sorry, not every time. He shuffled down the aisle they had made for him, meeting each gaze and then flinching away, muttering, "Sorry – sorry – sorry," as he passed each impassive face. But when he saw the orange-skinned old man – and, later, the Lieutenant-governor of Lucknow – he couldn't say sorry. The word died on his lips. Instead, he said, "I wish I hadn't killed you, but I'm very glad somebody did."

And then Sita would give him a little kick and tell him to think of her apple trees.

She did this quite often. And it seemed to Jack as they went along that she did it whenever they passed someone who she judged he shouldn't have killed – a woman, say, or an old man. Or maybe it was less a judgement and more an anticipation of how he would feel when he passed someone like that.

At any rate, the only sound in the cavern as they walked forwards – apart from the faint, obtrusive breathing, and the grinding of the unseen door – was Sita saying, "Are you thinking of my apple trees?" And Jack retorting, "Are you keeping your eyes closed?"

The clammy mist hid the group at the very end of the room, but he had always been expecting them. Still, when the breeze whipped the mist away and uncovered them, it took the last of his dancing petals with it. He was confronted by the sight of his mother, and Henry, and Baby Jane, with nothing but a bare branch to distract him.

He had seen a picture of her once, at Henry's place. The young Tilneys had been permitted to pose for a photograph with the more genteel of the family's servants, as a sort of holiday treat – the two of them seated stiffly at his mother's feet, while the governess towered over all three like a gorgon of correction.

It was a mark of how fond Henry had been of Jack's mother that he'd kept this photograph, because that governess had later run off with the family's silverware. Not that Jack blamed her. He'd heard stories about the way Jane had teased the poor woman for her unfortunate face.

His mother's face was not unfortunate – although he supposed it had been for her, because William Cade had noticed it. She had Jack's high cheek-bones and blonde hair, and a strong chin which would probably have led people to call her 'handsome' rather than 'pretty'. 

And she looked sad. Of course, the governess had looked sad too – it was a wretched in-between state to be a genteel servant. It couldn't have been fun trying to control maddeningly superior upper-class brats either. But there was something more in his mother's sadness. A brilliant sensitivity which told in the lines around her mouth, and in her long, expressive fingers. It had hurt when the world had cast her off. She had been accustomed to thinking better of it.

And, looking at her now, he saw pain in every joint and sinew. He saw her wince with every step he took towards her. That made it worse than any scorn or disdain or screaming. He was hurting her.

He stood frozen when his taper ran out, not knowing where to go, or having any particular desire to get there. Even Sita ceased her little kicks and stopped trying to steer him by his hair.

His mother was flanked by Henry and Baby Jane. With difficulty, Jack dragged his eyes over each of them. "Henry," he said, with a half-frozen nod. And then, in a higher voice, "Jane. Oh, it was a boy, that's-"

He teetered a little. Only the thought that he was carrying Sita on his shoulders – and that she might fall and bang her head – kept him upright. She was the taper now.

"I'm ashamed of you," said his mother. She had a muted, musical voice, like a lovely tune heard through several floors.

Stiffly, Jack glanced back down the line of murdered men and women. "No kidding," he said.

Sita dug her heel into his ribs. "That's no more your mother than the creature in the stadium was Ellini. Ignore her."

"Yes," said Jack. He could see the door now, over his mother's shoulder. There was a good five foot of space underneath it. They had obviously made good time. Perhaps the Queen had expected him to spend longer cowering outside the room.

Suddenly, he felt an urge to prolong this excruciating moment. After all, time was not an issue, and his mother was looking at him, and he would never see her again. Her hand was on Henry's shoulder, in a gentle, maternal way, and that hurt, but – well, life was wall-to-wall hurt. Very few corners of it still contained any remnant of Elizabeth Barrett.

He said, "I thought about you every day. Every day of my life."

"It doesn't seem to have done you any good," said Elizabeth Barrett, with a twist of her mouth.

Sita kicked him again. "Not real, Ishmael. Let's go."

"Yes," said Jack, although he said it just to shut her up. "Goodbye then, mother. Sorry again, Henry – Jane. I really didn't mean to-"

Elizabeth Barrett spat in his face. A genteel piano mistress, in full view of her pupils, spat in his face. She must have learned that from William.

Jack rocked on his heels but didn't fall. Sita slid down his back, steadied herself, and then aimed a kick at his mother's shins. Her leg passed straight through, but not – this time – because she was insubstantial. It was because the figures were breaking up like mist. Perhaps they'd never been anything more than sculptures in the clouds of breath.

Still, he kept his hand on his cheek where his mother had spat at him, as if it had been a parting kiss, and watched while she was whisked away.